Hawley Harvey Crippen was an American, born in Michigan in 1862, who
qualified as a doctor in 1885 and worked for a patent medicine company.
He had come to England in 1900 and lived at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Holloway from
where he again worked in the patent medicine business. He lived,
unhappily, with his second wife Cora Turner, who was trying to make her way as a
music hall singer under the stage name of Belle Elmore.

Cora Crippen

Early in 1910 Belle disappeared, after having given notice of withdrawing her
money from a joint deposit account. Crippen's remuneration from
Munyon's patent medicine company had been transferred from salary to
commission only, and he was therefore likely to have been in financial
difficulty, especially as he had been entertaining his mistress and typist,
Ethel le Neve, in hotels.

Ethel produced two letters, apparently from Cora, to the Music Hall Ladies'
Guild, resigning her position as she had had to go to America. But
the letters were not in Cora's handwriting.

A letter signed by Cora Crippen

Crippen moved Ethel into the house, and she began to wear his
wife's clothing and jewellery. Belle Elmore's wondered what had happened to her,
and Crippen had been telling them that she had moved back to the USA to see a
sick relative. The friends went to Scotland Yard to report their
suspicions.

Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew visited Crippen, but Crippen claimed
that his wife had eloped with a lover. A search did not reveal
anything suspicious, and Dew withdrew to make further enquiries.

Worried by this turn of events, Crippen and Ethel le Neve left the country
for Antwerp, and then embarked on ss Montrose bound for Canada in the
names of Mr and Master Robinson, with Ethel in disguise as a boy.

When the police returned to Hilldrop Crescent amore thorough search was
undertaken and parts of a female body were found buried beneath the cellar.

The cellar at Hilldrop Crescent

Dr Bernard Spilsbury, later to become the famous pathologist, identified the
remains as that of Mrs Crippen from a piece of abdominal scar tissue, and found
that there were traces of a poison hyoscene in the body.

The rest of the body was never found, despite further through searches and
digging up the garden.

The garden at Hilldrop Crescent

Meanwhile Crippen and Ethel le Neve were circulated as wanted.

Captain Kendall, the master of the ss Montrose, became
suspicious of two of his passengers, a Mr John Robinson and his "16-year old
"son" and used the new telegraph system to alert his ship owners of his
suspicion that they were Crippen and Ethel le Neve. This was the
first example of a ship-to-shore telegraph being used to catch a fugitive
criminal.

Walter Dew took a faster ship, the ss Laurentic, and arrested Crippen
before he could land in Canada, to the rapt excitement of the public who had
been kept informed of every move by the excited press.

Crippen appeared at the Old Bailey and claimed that even if the remains in
the cellar had been a woman, or even of Belle Elmore, they must have been buried
there without his knowledge, but Bernard Spilsbury's evidence proved the
identity of the remains, and the jury convicted him of murder after 5 days of
evidence and 27 minutes of consideration. Ethel le Neve was tried
separately and acquitted.

The National Archives has now published a book on Crippen
as part of its Crime Archive series. Written by Katherine
D Watson, an expert on crime history and poisoning crimes, it contains a
number of images from the National Archives files, and costs £7.99.
ISBN 978 1 905615 15 5